The first being that can not merge ground and air freight to be as efficient as UPS due to union considerations. Air is under the Railway Labor Act, which is difficult to unionize, Ground is covered under the highway act, much easier to unionize. ground uses contractors(independant business owners) to defeat unionization.

The 2nd is the over committment to service. Where competitors built large terminals, FedEx for example had
7 terminals in Atlanta when I worked there in 1985, verus UPS's one. The rationale was lower stem times to service areas better. This strategy drove up lease costs, and M&A costs. They are now trying to reverse this strategy.

The 3rd is their People philosophy. Which they have not tried to replicate at their other companies.
Their processes such as guarenteed fair treatment were employees could GFT anything, was such a drag on management that they handed out in inflated performance evaluations. They failed to address performance problems and conduct issues. The also had an SFA program (Survet Feedback Action)
where employees completed evaluations of their manager secretly. One term that stuck me while I was at FedEx was a Managing Director telling me " to succeed at FedEx you kinda of have to be a disingenious sociopath." When the company had to push productibity particulary with the drivers, the employees felt a sense of betrayel, not justified, but it was and still is there.

[...] we wrote back in October, the restructuring plan underway at FedEx is about retooling the company for a different era: more sea freight and less air freight, tougher overseas competition, new trends in global trade. [...]

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